Tag: Email

The Patriot Act provision that authorized mass surveillance on Americans is set to expire, but don’t be fooled: The snooping is likely to continue. In an interview with Truthdig, Sen. Ron Wyden calls ending dragnet surveillance a “big priority.”

In theory, the changeover from paper to email should make government more transparent. But two New York politicos are showing that the era of Big Data does not necessarily mean the public gets a better view of its government.

Is the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s clandestine approach to email, involving her exclusive use of a personal email account while secretary of state, about transparency or partisan politicking in the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign season?

Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin summarizes the latest research into the neurological effects of so-called multitasking in a world where email, Facebook and instant messaging demand our attention more or less constantly.

In an astoundingly broad sweep, the National Security Agency has been collecting personal online contact lists from tens of millions of Americans through instant message log-in systems, such as Facebook. And it has evaded legal proscriptions on domestic spying by collecting the data from offshore collection points, The Washington Post reports.

In response to a lawsuit against it, the information giant acknowledged that no one using Gmail or emailing a Gmail account holder should expect the content of his or her correspondence to remain exclusive.

Top secret documents passed to The Guardian by Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency has a “secret backdoor” into its databases that allows its agents to search U.S. citizens’ email and phone calls without a warrant or other oversight.

A career intelligence officer has leaked the existence of a top secret program called PRISM, which gives the government direct access to files, including photos, e-mails and video chats, hosted by the biggest technology companies.

As the larger part of American culture seems ready to surrender its claim to privacy without question, organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation are riding like Paul Revere through the digital Massachusetts night.

It’s an election year, and that means it’s time for the ugliest sides of humanity to come trotting out, and not just in candidates’ debates and ads or on Fox News. Thanks to the Interwebs, we now can also look forward to hearing about some less-than-noble sentiments shared in forwarded emails.

The state-sponsored war on intimacy, fellowship and private contact continues in Missouri, where Gov. Jay Nixon just signed into law a bill forbidding any direct social networking contact between students and teachers. (more)

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests made by the elite liberal media, the world is now privy to reams, literally, of emails written by then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during her truncated tenure in office. Let’s give them a look, shall we?

The Google email accounts of hundreds of American journalists and government and military officials were successfully raided as part of a spear-phishing operation conducted by Chinese hackers who tricked their targets into signing in on a decoy login page.

Remember that guy who allegedly broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account back in 2008? Well, it turns out he’s in federal court in Knoxville, Tenn., facing 50 years in the slammer if convicted of the criminal charges.

After sending an e-mail on March 16 telling members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps to come “locked, loaded and ready” to Arizona’s border with Mexico, group President Carmen Mercer discovered that some from the radical anti-immigration group’s ranks ... (continued)

From Nigerian “millionaire” plans to “FBI agent” schemes, millions of dollars have been lost to scams on the Internet. Last year saw reported losses from Internet fraud more than double, rising from $264.6 million in 2008 to $559.7 million in 2009.

Google has been pretty successful at just about everything its engineers have attempted, with the glaring exception of social media. Still getting trounced by Facebook and losing buzzshare to upstarts like Twitter and Foursquare, the company plans to get aggressive, starting with new social features in Gmail. (continued)

How exactly does an administration lose millions of e-mails? However it happened, 22 million Bush-era White House e-mails have been recovered, and more may be found. The content, however, probably won’t be made public for years.

The apparently deliberately timed release of leaked e-mails stolen from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia has created problems for the global warming cause just as world leaders are preparing to convene at the Copenhagen climate change summit, and now the United Nations is launching its own investigation into the incident.

Public memory often has a short shelf life, and it doesn’t preclude the potential for rapid recycling, according to The New York Times’ take on the current “death panel” controversy, considering that a prototypical version of this particular argument made the rounds during the (Internet-enabled) Clinton era.

The president-elect is a notorious gadget hound who has been known to carry multiple cell phones, but he faces a looming downgrade. Because the public has a right to presidential records, Barack Obama will probably give up his precious Blackberry—and quit e-mailing altogether. However, he is likely to be the first president with a laptop on his desk.

So, everyone has a relative, or perhaps a neighbor, who has spread warnings in hushed tones about Barack Obama’s years of secret indoctrination at a Muslim madrassa (gasp!) in Indonesia—as though affiliating with a Muslim community of any description is cause for concern—a rumor that has been disproved many times. Here’s a fun look into the origin of the chain e-mail that started that particular smear.

Anonymous, an Internet-based group best known for pranking and protesting the Church of Scientology, apparently hacked Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail account and posted images of her inbox and correspondence on the Web. The McCain campaign condemned the “shocking invasion,” which turned up nothing of substantial juiciness.

According to an internal e-mail obtained by the AP, the chief of staff of the EPA’s enforcement wing has issued a gag order, telling staffers in June exactly what to do should a reporter, the inspector general or the Government Accountability Office call: “Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.”

Inching closer to concession, Hillary Clinton shifted gears on Thursday, taking a different tone in an e-mail to her allies and readying them to back her rival for the top spot on the Democratic presidential ticket, Barack Obama. However, she will still wait until Saturday to make any kind of formal announcement about her status in the race.

An end may be in sight for striking television and film writers and their studio bosses if negotiations, now set to resume Nov. 26, are effective. However, WGA West President Patric Verrone cautioned union members to stand their ground in an e-mail titled “Don’t Break Out the Champagne Just Yet.”

There’s a reason why it’s nicknamed CrackBerry. North American BlackBerry users were dismayed Tuesday night by an overnight shutdown of the company’s wireless e-mail service that left them bereft of their fix—and forced them to communicate in passé ways.

Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, balked at the White House’s suggestion that several e-mails related to the U.S. attorneys scandal have been deleted. As many as 50 White House employees have used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts, possibly to conceal communications.